Part 4 The Journey Chapter 180 Spring Awakening (5)

The 124 strikes were divided into three teams, with the first team of 80 planes concentrated on attacking the airfield in the east of the island, the second team of 24 planes attacking the middle of the island, and the third team attacking the field airfield in the west of the island with 20 planes, with the destruction of enemy planes on the ground as the main task. The second attack wave 60 aircraft carried out with the army's heavy bombers after destroying airfield facilities and water bases was a priority.

At this time, the carrier-based aircraft unit of the Imperial Navy was full of skilled pilots who had gone through Hawaii, "Plank Road" and "Typhoon" operations, and they had extremely rich experience in actual combat, but they had fought smooth battles before, dealing with the US military, which had a relatively backward concept of war, but this time the opponent was the British army, which had been striving to stand at the forefront of military technology in the world for hundreds of years, and it must not be taken lightly. In view of this, before setting out for the battle, Commander Liang Shuming conducted a concentrated training on the pilots participating in the battle with the theme of "not being arrogant or fearful, and going all out," focusing on sweeping away the blind optimism that was pervading the troops for a while, and demanding that the troops enter the battle with the spirit of being nervous, serious, earnest, and always ready to sacrifice before the Pearl Harbor operation.

Probably thanks to the rich experience and cautious style of the pilots of the mobile fleet, and perhaps with the help of the clouds, when the first attack group appeared over the target area with their backs to the sun, there were less than 10 enemy planes in the sky that were on guard, and they were quickly swept away by our highly skilled escort fighter team.

The "Thunder Eagle" attack aircraft, which appeared as a horizontal bomber, braved the smoke of the anti-aircraft guns that bloomed in the sky and quickly swept across the tarmac, dropping a dense special "Iron Rain No. 1" cluster bomb. into a sea of fire.

Each "Thunder Eagle" is loaded with eight 50-kilogram "Tieyu No. 1", each with 24 multi-purpose bullets equipped with high-efficiency igniters and steel balls, and the telescopic probe rod installed at the front end of the cluster bomb (extended after throwing) can make the bomb detonate in the air more than two meters in the air, and the bullet with a delayed fuse is projected into a radius of 50 meters, and the effective killing radius of each bullet is seven to ten meters, and theoretically one "Tieyu No. 1" can cover a target area of more than 7,000 square meters, which is to deal with cluster infantry, vehicle columns, Ideal weapon for soft targets such as apron fleets.

Due to the complexity of making such bombs and the high cost, only a small number of elite aviation units of the army can receive them with special permission from the base camp because of the special nature of the operation. On the contrary, the carrier-based aviation units, which are regarded as the essence of the navy and the "treasure of the palm of the base camp," have always had this kind of "special" ammunition at their disposal without any restrictions, and the army aviation units are not jealous.

The British troops who were attacked by surprise did not lose their will to fight, and the tarmac swept by cluster bombs was only parked with less than half of the Malayan Air Force's "standby" planes, and the remaining half of the "reserve" planes were scattered and hidden in the dense forests around the airport, and most of them were unscathed.

The escort fighter squadron of the first attack wave, which had not encountered strong resistance from imagination, raided the water and aircraft base in the south of the island in accordance with the plan, and strafed the enemy water planes in the mooring with special incendiary bombs, destroying and damaging nearly 20 planes.

When the second attack wave 72 arrives in the target area. It was frantically intercepted by British fighter planes, but fortunately, the army's heavy bomber unit appeared in time. Attracting the attention of some enemy planes and relieving the pressure on the escort fighters, the Thunder attack planes took advantage of the gap to drop hundreds of ordinary bombs of the 50 to 250 pound class on the towers, oil tanks, warehouses, barracks, and other facilities, and immediately returned home with full horsepower.

Under the cover of the Navy's fighter fleet, the Army's heavy bomber squadron 38 platoons rushed to the battlefield in a dense formation to bomb Changi Airport, dropping nearly 30 tons of bombs one after another, with .+ slots in between, causing a skyrocketing fire......

After the two waves of attacks, a total of 100,110 enemy planes were destroyed on the ground and on the surface, and 30 planes were shot down in the air. Heavily damaged the enemy's airfield and water base, 29 of our troops did not return, including 24 naval planes and 5 army planes. Dozens of other planes returned with injuries.

In view of the fact that there is still a big gap between the known results of the battle and the strength of the enemy's forces as stated in the intelligence, and the task of "destroying the enemy's aviation forces on the Singapore side" has not yet been completed, Lieutenant General Liang Shuming ordered the launch of a third wave of attacks. The strike team will use timed fuse bombs and secondary trigger fuse cluster bombs (similar to air-dropped mines) to block the airfield, and in addition to the escort fighter fleet, a fleet of fighter-bombers carrying small bombs will be dispatched to hunt low around the airfield in search of remnants of the enemy who may be hiding in the woods.

Just as the Mobile Fleet was recovering the second attack wave with all its might and preparing to dispatch the third attack wave, an enemy plane followed the second attack wave and found the target they wanted to attack - the aircraft carrier.

The fighters guarding the aircraft carrier approached in time, and all the enemy planes were shot down in the future, but unexpectedly a larger group of enemy planes came later, and several of them desperately drilled through the defense line of our fighters and dropped torpedoes under blazing anti-aircraft fire.

In any case, this is the first time since the beginning of the war that the invincible aircraft carrier force has really been involved in danger, and the aircraft carrier unit of the US Pacific Fleet, which has inflicted heavy damage with torpedo planes, has finally been attacked by enemy torpedo planes.

In the mothership defense battle known as "Singapore Fighting Sparrows", the 50th and 504th squadrons of the "Dapeng" were in the limelight, and the two squadrons took half of the total number of 48 planes - exactly 24 planes, and Lieutenant Di Dongfang Ming of the 501st Squadron and Lieutenant Cai Guolan of the 504th Squadron became the earliest "single-day trump card" of the empire with 6 and 5 aircraft respectively. The losses on the part of the mobile fleet were minor - 6 fighters crashed into the sea, 4 pilots were killed or missing, 2 people were rescued, in addition, the destroyer took a 100-pound bomb and ate a 100-pound bomb, the ship was flooded, the main gun of A was damaged, and the crew of the ship was killed and wounded.

After striking two annoying sparrows, the third attack wave still attacked according to the plan, and successfully completed the task of blocking the airfield at the cost of seven planes not returning.

After recovering the third attack wave, Liang Shuming ordered the whole team to return to Kaohsiung, and the raid on Singapore codenamed "Spring Awakening" came to an end.

In this campaign, the Malayan Air Force and the Royal Navy's Singapore Air Force lost a total of various types of aircraft, and the essence was exhausted, and they were never able to recover their vitality, so that Yuan Shikaidi First South China Sea Group was able to make a more smooth and rapid leap forward without its own air support, and finally reached Johor Bahru and pacified the Malay Peninsula with a very small loss within the specified time limit.